SUDDENLY, something within the compartment moved with the swift silence of a cat. It struck the crouching co-pilot from the rear. The force of that blow sent the co-pilot lurching head foremost through the opening. One gloved hand groped instinctively the rushing emptiness. The other gripped the edge of the opening. For a moment, only one hand and the toe of his shoe kept him from pitching into space.
In the baggage compartment, the shadowy form moved again. A fist clenched, struck out at the man precariously balanced between life and death. But the co-pilot was ready for such a move. Where another man might have clung to the plane in a panic until the attacker had beaten him into releasing his grip, the co-pilot gripped the edge of the opening with both hands and twisted around so that he faced the one who was determined he should die. As the murderer in the plane struck out, the co-pilot seized his assailant by the wrist. For a moment it seemed that the co-pilot would draw his would-be assassin through the opening. Then abruptly, the co-pilot released his grip on the attacker’s wrist.
The shadowy form lurched backwards, crashed into some baggage beyond. The co-pilot scrambled back through the opening. He seemed uncertain as to the exact point of danger because of the darkness. Suddenly the murderer came at him with head lowered. He sidestepped, drew a pistol, but held his fire. For the murderer flung himself sideways through the opening in the fuselage.
The co-pilot wasted no time debating whether his assailant’s action meant suicide or escape by means of a parachute. Only one thing he knew: it was the old woman in black who had killed all the passengers in the cabin as well as the radio operator.
The co-pilot moved back through the cabin, walking warily among the dead. He entered the tiny control room and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Let me take her,” he shouted.
The pilot shook his head and pointed mutely at what the co-pilot had already seen, the lights of the airport. The plane was already circling the field.
The co-pilot’s voice suddenly grew harsh as he said: “Think it over, brother!” And at the same time he pushed the muzzle of his gun under the pilot’s nose. The pilot jerked startled eyes from his instruments. The gun in the co-pilot’s hand spoke inaudibly above the roar of the motors. There was only a cloud of white vapor that spat from the muzzle of the pistol into the pilot’s face. The pilot sagged forward on his controls. The plane dived dangerously, but in another moment righted itself as the skilled hands of Secret Agent X took over the controls.
THE SECRET AGENT’S errand in Chicago had been exactly the same as that of G-man Hughes. Agent X, too, had been dissatisfied with the result of the Tony Lizio trials. It seemed impossible that so ignorant and unintelligent a man as Lizio could have been behind the kidnaping and murder of John Jonalden. And in his fight to save a man, whom he believed to be innocent, X had encountered evidence that indicated that Lolly Turney might have known more about the crime than he would have cared to tell. One of the Agent’s informers had seen Turney leaving Lizio’s shanty just before the police found evidence there, in the form of unfinished ransom letters, that led to Lizio’s arrest.
Lizio denied any knowledge of the affair. He claimed that he was too ignorant of the English language to have composed the ransom letters. Still, this ignorance might have been feigned.
Confident of Turney’s connection with the case, X was determined to follow Turney back from Chicago. Turney, X felt certain, would make an attempt to rob Hempstead, the jeweler. X had hoped to use the threat of punishment for attempted robbery to compel Turney to talk. But on arriving at the airport, X had discovered that all passenger room had been taken. At the last minute, X had run across the plane’s radio operator, knocked him out, and impersonated him.
Long after the plane had left, police had discovered the unconscious radio operator locked in a washroom in an airport hangar. Their radio message to New York, to be on the lookout for an impersonator on board the night plane, had been intercepted by Agent X. He had acted at once, luring the co-pilot into the radio compartment, knocking him out, and switching identities with him.
But one other person had intercepted that message besides Agent X—the woman in black. And to the woman in black, as to every other criminal, the presence of Secret Agent X meant trouble. It was because the woman in black believed she was destroying her most dreaded enemy that the man in the radio compartment had been killed. For undoubtedly, she thought this man was Secret Agent X.
As Agent X handled the controls of the airliner, compelling it to circle the field time after time, a man at the airport slowly melted with anxiety, excitement and suppressed rage. That man was Inspector John Burks.
Burks paced the ground, shook his fist at the circling plane, and perspired. His fingers gripped the arm of one of his subordinates. “He’s up there, like a cat up a tree, and I got a damn good idea he knows that he can’t come down without falling into our trap.”
“How could that be, sir?” demanded the detective. “According to the message from Chicago, Agent X will be impersonating the radio operator. If that’s the case, he wouldn’t be in control of the plane.”
“Huh, you don’t know Agent X,” Burks grumbled. “Changes his face like a woman changes her mind. You get this, and you, too, Henderson, nobody leaves that plane until I get a look at every man on board. I’ve been given free hand by the airport officials.”
“The plane’s coming in now, sir,” one of the detectives pointed out.
Burks nodded. “Come on. And there’s going to be no funny stuff when I get my hands on him. There’ll be no talk until I get him where I want him—behind the bars.” And he was off, running toward the plane that was taxiing in from the field.
The motors were cut, the plane stopped. Burks and his five picked men circled the ship. Burks took up his position in front of the door from which passengers usually alighted. His hand rested uneasily on the butt of his gun. There was something queer inside that plane. There was none of the usual bustle. Only foreboding silence.
Suddenly, the oval door slid open. A very white-faced young man leaned against it and looked dully down at Burks. The man wore a pilot’s outfit. “They’re dead,” he told Burks flatly.
“Dead? Who’s dead?” Burks put out his hand and seized the edge of the door. “Let down the steps, can’t you. I’m coming on board.”
Burks swung up through the door. “Where’s your radio man?” he demanded.
“Dead,” replied the pilot tonelessly.
Burks frowned. He nodded at one of his men. “Watch this pilot, Henderson. Something I don’t like about—” Burks stopped. Just beyond where the pilot stood, Burks saw the figure of a man squatting in front of a small, mirror-topped case. The man’s fingers were covered with some puttylike material and were pressed against his cheeks. Burks crouched, sprang, whipped out his gun. He took no chances this time. He had caught Agent X in the very act of changing his makeup, He raised his gun and hacked down with the barrel to the side of the crouching man’s head.
THEN he could restrain himself no longer. Years of suspense and anticipation were behind that movement. No possible trick could avail Agent X now. He was absolutely helpless in Burks’ hands.
“I’ve got him, boys!” shouted Burks. “Got Agent X!” And as the other members of the police force were scrambling aboard the plane, Burks whipped out handcuffs and fastened them to the wrists of the unconscious captive.
The face of the man he had captured was indistinct, for it was covered with the plastic volatile material that Agent X used for his marvelous transformations, and this material had not yet been modeled over into features. But it was only a matter of minutes until he would remove that plastic and reveal, for the first time, the true features of Secret Agent X.
Burks’ men pressed around, filling the vestibule. One had dropped beside Burks and was in the act of peeling the makeup from their captive’s face. Suddenly, the man stopped. His eyes met those of Inspector Burks. “Say, chief, what did you hit this man with?”
; “My gun barrel,” Burks told him. “Why? Is he a long way out?”
“Yeah. A hell of a long way. He’s dead, and your sock on the head didn’t do it, either. He must have been dead when you came in here.”
Another detective, who had slipped into the passenger compartment reappeared. “Inspector,” he said huskily.
Burks glared at him. “Well what?”
The detective gestured back toward the cabin. “They—they’re all dead in there. Look like something off a scaffold. And somebody’s cleaned everybody’s pockets. That Hempstead fellow, the wealthy jeweler—well, he’s in there. You suppose somebody killed off everybody in the plane just to get Hempstead’s diamonds?”
“Who brought the ship to the ground then?” demanded Detective Henderson.
Burks turned to glare at Henderson. “Who brought the ship to the ground then,” Burks repeated slowly. Henderson flinched beneath his superior’s gaze. “What the devil did you do with that pilot, Henderson!” Burks roared.
“Why—why nothing. You said—” Henderson gestured mutely at the handcuffed corpse on the floor. All knew, then, that this was but another trick of the crafty Agent X. He had posed one of the dead passengers before the makeup kit that X always carries. But a moment had been required for him to slap some of the plastic material onto the face of the corpse. Then, at the moment when the police were positive they had Secret Agent X, the Agent had quietly slipped from the ship.
A few minutes before the police made this startling discovery, X had hurried across the flying field to be accosted near the hangar by a man of above average height His black eyes watered slightly and his long, thin nose twitched with a threatening sneeze. His black hair, gummy with brilliantine, had lost its patent-leather appearance and was all upstanding. He seized the Agent’s shoulder, clutched tenaciously, and got rid of a sneeze that seemed to come from his boot soles.
The man whisked out a handkerchief and waved it frantically at the airliner. “You came on that ship?” he demanded of the Agent.
X nodded.
“Well, was there a Mr. Hughes on board?”
X nodded again.
The man relieved himself of another sneeze and started for the plane. X caught his coat tail. “Wait,” he ordered. “Why do you want to see Hughes?”
The man stared in amazement at X. “Don’t you know me?” he gasped. “I’m Dean Winton, defense attorney for Lizio. Maybe you don’t know it, but Hughes is a federal operative. Department of Justice men are not convinced that Lizio pulled off the Jonalden kidnap-murder any more than I am. Hughes was following a lead that might bring in new evidence. Somehow, we’ve got to swing a reprieve for Lizio. But what business is it of yours, Mr. Flyer?”
X shook his head. “None at all. Only somebody beat you to Hughes. You better look somewhere else for the makings of a reprieve. And the person who beat you to Hughes shut him up—permanently.”
But as Agent X left Dean Winton alternately gasping and sneezing, he vowed solemnly that Tony Lizio would never go to the chair. How he could possibly save the man, he did not know. But some brain beside the one inside Lizio’s thick skull had designed the slaughter on board the airliner. And in spite of the fact that all on board had been robbed of loot that must have totaled over fifty thousand dollars, X felt that the true motive behind the wholesale murder was to remove Lolly Turney and Federal Agent Hughes.
Turney had known something about the Jonalden case. Hughes might have forced Turney to talk. Both had died, and Hughes had been robbed of every scrap of paper that might have contained a record of what Turney had told him.
And only a few hours separated Lizio from the chair….
CHAPTER II
The Woman in Black
A MAN lounged against the wall of a disreputable East-side lodging house. The shadows effectively concealed his features but could not hide his rather remarkable body. Shoulders and head were square. His chest was broad and deep. This tremendous breadth seemed to deny the fact that he was over six feet tall.
His name was Harvey Bates and he was director of Secret Agent X’s most important corps of secret operatives. For an hour or more he had leaned thus against the building where he had last seen the man X had assigned him to follow. That man was Pat “The Terrible” Turney, younger brother of Lolly Turney, and one of the few remaining members of the Turney gang. The power of the gang had dwindled since bootlegging days until now it was scarcely to be reckoned with at all.
Yet Bates knew that Agent X believed the Turneys to be in some way connected with the kidnaping and brutal murder of John Jon-alden. The Jonalden case was not one that offered much of a foothold for the ordinary investigator. The ransom for the young millionaire had been raised by one of his terrified, irresponsible associates. Police had not been informed until the money had changed hands and Jonalden had been returned, a corpse.
Bates’ reminiscences were cut suddenly short by the staccato click of high heels on the pavement. There was no sign of tenseness in Bates’ big body, but he was nevertheless alert on the instant. At the end of the block, light from a street lamp found its way beneath the tilted brim of the girl’s hat. Bates nodded in silent satisfaction.
The girl was not only petite and attractive, but what was more important, Bates recognized her as a girl who had entered the dwelling of “Terrible” Turney before. Her name, he had discovered, or at least the one she used as a night club entertainer, was Fay October.
The girl stopped in front of the dwelling, went up the front steps, and knocked at the door. There was no answer. She came down, passed so close to Bates that he could have tripped her, and disappeared beyond the door that Bates knew covered a closed stairway in the same building.
A few minutes later, Bates deserted his post. He staggered aimlessly along and half fell into the doorway through which Fay October had entered. He sang vaguely a few bars of a song in a lusty, drunken voice. Above him at the top of the steps, a man’s voice cursed him. Then the man went into a room and slammed the door. Evidently, the occupants of the dismal place supposed Bates to be a genuine sot. Bates shouted back that if they didn’t like his music he’d have to move along.
He moved, but noiselessly and straight up the steps into the dark hall above. At the first door he came to, he pressed his ear to the panel. Only the snap of cards sounded within. A man playing solitaire. Bates moved on down the hall and stopped. Ahead of him, Fay October came out of a room, left the door open and moved on down the hall to enter another room. Bates slipped into the room the girl had just left. Inside, was a table, some chairs and no bed. It looked a lot more like a meeting place than a lodging.
VOICES in the next room. Bates moved over to the wall and leaned against it. He listened intently to a voice that he recognized as that of “Terrible” Turney.
“Why did Lolly have to knock off a whole plane full of people just to get the Hempstead rocks, boss?”
A second man replied in a steady, low-pitched voice: “He didn’t. Your brother didn’t get the Hempstead diamonds. And he didn’t do the killing. When I said that all the passengers in the plane were killed—”
“You mean Lolly? You mean somebody chiseled in on the Hempstead rocks? Lolly got rubbed out by a dirty chiseler?”
“Apparently,” replied the other calmly.
There was a moment of silence, then Turney growled: “You got any idea who killed Lolly? Talk. Just name the guy. I’ll get him.”
“Only one man could have killed all the passengers on that plane and still escape the police,” replied the unknown evenly. “Secret Agent X was on that plane. The police got word from Chicago.”
Turney whistled. “I’ve heard of that guy. Well, he’ll wish he’d kept his mug out of this when I get hold of him.”
The other laughed softly. “Perhaps that won’t be necessary. Perhaps I’ve already disposed of Agent X…. But who is that in the next room?”
“Just Lewey Strait,” Turney replied. “Used to be a good guy. Gone soft now.”
“Who’s he talking to?”
“Hell, how should I know?”
“Sh-sh.”
Bates listened eagerly, but the men in the next room were perfectly silent. Somewhere in the building, voices rumbled, but the words were indistinguishable.
Then an exclamation from Turney.
“Wait,” cautioned the other. “You’ll not get anywhere by breaking in there alone. We have to keep out of trouble.”
“But suppose what he says worked? Suppose that bird next door did get Lizio out of the big house on a fake pardon or something? Who takes the rap for the Jonalden—”
“Shut up!” the other warned. “We’ll keep out of this. But we’ll send Fay October for the police. We’ll let the police do our job for us.”
A few minutes after Bates’ entrance into the building, a second man had entered and proceeded at once to the room occupied by Lewey Strait. Strait was an ex-convict who had done his stretch for forgery. He was a stooped man with a crooked nose and a lower lip that snarled down from yellow teeth. His fingers had been made for pinching the pen and he had an uncanny knack for remembering signatures.
His visitor was tall, with lean, outstanding cheek bones and a rocky jaw. His eyes mirrored no emotion, but there seemed a tangible force in their gray depths. And no wonder. They were the eyes of Secret Agent X.
“Lewey,” said Agent X quietly, “I’ve a job for you.”
Lewey Strait looked distrustfully up at the man in the doorway. His stooped shoulders twitched nervously. He had never seen the man before but the man knew his name.
“A little forgery job that unfortunately I am not able to do for myself,” Agent X continued.
LEWEY started to slam the door, shook his head. “You get out of here, mister. You got the wrong place.”
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 2